CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1935, Page 9 (Supplement)

CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

THE MERRIER ' ENGLAND TOWER PAGEANT REFLECTIONS. CONTRAST WITH MODERNITY. (By Air Mail—Special to News.) London, May 30. The Tower Pageant, incidentally a particularly worthy performance and ambitiously correct in all its lustoncal detail, gives the 20th-century Londoner furiously to think. Of all the many admirably staged and acted scenes—resurrecting English History, one might gay ? jn its cradle, so ancient is the Tower —l’liked most the marching forth of London’s 17th-century trained bands. Gazing at these gaily clad apprentices, with their old-fashioned arms and banners, one automatically contrasted them with both the modem city street crowd and the up-to-date steel-helmeted khaki infantry. What colour and grace _we modems have sacrificed to achieve cylindrical trousers and dull factorymade suits. Even sartorial environment must be important in its psychological effect. Measured thus, our modem progress looks like retrogression. Those trained bands, by the way, were the military ancestors of our present H.A.C. Many of the latter are enacting their ancestral role at the Tower now. . Boom in Biking.

Early on Sunday morning ,1 had to travel by car into London by the main road leading to Folkestone and Dover. Never before did the reality, of the modem biking boom present itself so impressively. In the course of less than an hour we passed between fifteen and twenty thousand cyclists, all making as fast as they could pedal for ,the country lying south-east of London. There were single cyclists, cyclists riding in couples, and whole club battalions en ■ masse. Practically it was one long procession of cyclists, who occupied the extreme right of..the road aS we. travelled, towards London, leaving the middle of the carriage way for overtaking motorists. For every one. motor-cyclist in the procession, there must, have been several hundred push-bikists. We hear a lot about the post-war hiking craze, but it is insignificant by comparison with the biking vogue. Girls figure prominently in the latter,' and seem equally divided between plus-fours and abbreviated shorts. I did. not see a solitary skirt. In Memoriam.-

There opened to the public in London last week one. of the. ; saddest memorial, exhibitions that many artists remember.. It is a' display of the work of Charles Sargeant Jagger, the sculptor who, with iiis own experience as a Tommy to aid him, was responsible for; several war memorials’ in which the striking lifelike figure of the soldier iri his fighting kit and in* characteristic attitudes has touched, the heart of the man in the street as no representation of Justice, Mercy, or a purely symbolical subject could do. Jagger died ; last winter, his untimely death due to trying to finish some sculpture while he was a very sick man; and his friends have Organised this exhibition’ of' some fifty pieces of his work, ranging from a charming bronze of the Prince'of- Wales in tennis kit, to several huge military figures similar to those seen to such advantage in the R.A. War memorial at Hyde Park corner which was executed by hirii; Life In Los Angeles. *-• ’

According to the account given me an actor friend, who has' just returned from Hollywood to London, the most amazing city on earth is Los Angeles; In no other place in the world are the crowds that throng the streets so cosmopolitan, so vivid, so weird, or so artificial. The climate is heavenly and the .sea. bathing superb, but the film studios are :grim. From all - over the world screen aspirants make for Hollywood, filled with high ambitions of fame and fortune, but not. one in. .thousands makes ’ even S moderate living, out. of it. Many believe they are called but only the very, fewest are chosen. One result of’this is that th.e ; wrii,tiresses and cafe girls in Lbs. Angeles are the prettiest to be seen anywhere.. 1 They are beauty queens and film actresses; who have failed to make good. ’ The lucky, ones who succeed earn princely 'salaries, for a time at all events, but Los -Angeles is filled with princely, shipwrecks. It is almost impossible, however, to meet anybody who is not interesting in some way.

Stamp Market. The most important stamp bourse in the world is the .one now being held, as periodically happens, in a room at the Holbom Restaurant. Stairip dealers from the ends of the earth, east and West, north and south, are gathered for the three-day London’stamp market, arid at the white-topped tables one may overhear as many strange tongues as confused the contractors of the Tower of Babel. None but the keen philatelist can hope to follow the transactions with any expertness, nor to form.. any real' idea as to the values of the: goods displayed. But even the outlarider cannot fail to be impressed by the huge, commercial importance created by the mere insignia of the world’s postage. ’At this particular stamp mart, of course, jubilee issues are the dominant line. The demand for Dominion and Colonial jubilee stamps, of which there are as many as 225 different varieties, exceeds present supplies.

Jubilee Tattoo. Aidershot Command means to break all records with its silver jubilee Tattoo. This summer’s military display, in honour of the King’s quarter-of-a-century reign, will be the most elaborate of the wholh successful series, ar.fi'' the advance booking suggests that, given anything like good weather conditions, all attendance figures will be dwarfed. The Tattoo spectacles will be staged by 5000 troops, including the Life Guards and Yeoman Warders of the Tower, = and the massed bands alone will number 2000 performers, including, of course, the pipers of the Highland regiments. . The main pageant will -present the ten Kings of England whose reigns extended to 25 years or more. It should be a thoroughly interesting and thrilling feature, recapturing vanished English history in picturesque retrospect, and,. despite the protests of those who assume the role of pacifists, Service charities will benefit splendidly. Different.

We hear a lot about the changed outlook of our past-war youngsters. But I cannot help thinking that their elders have changed just as much. To the end of her days Queen Victoria was never really reconciled to railway travel. But the Marquis of Huntly, just to show us that he is really Cock o’ the North perhaps, and a worthy 20th-century Chief of the Clan Gordon, has been elately making his first flight in an aeroplane at the age of 87. The . occasion was silver jubilee- week, and the adequate pretext a flight over London at night, to view the illuminations and admire the flood-lit architecture. I cannot imagine any Victorian grandfathers behaving in this adventurous way, even if they had had a chance. The spirit of high adventure seems to have infected all of us. Maybe that is why public opinion is so blase about road casualties.